News Room

January 15, 2008

State planning board unanimously approves Carle Foundation Hospital's plan to expand research floor at Mills Breast Cancer Institute

January 15, 2008 

At its January 15 meeting in Springfield, the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board unanimously approved a plan by Carle Foundation Hospital to expand the research floor of the Mills Breast Cancer Institute, a world-class facility currently under construction on the Hospital's main medical campus in Urbana.

When the Mills Breast Cancer Institute opens this spring, it will be the only freestanding facility in downstate Illinois dedicated to breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, education and research.

"We are so pleased that the state planning board saw the need for expanding the research floor, and granted us the necessary approval to move forward with completing this much anticipated project," said James C. Leonard, M.D., president and CEO of The Carle Foundation.

Through its certificate of need process, the state planning board approved plans in January 2006 to allow construction of the Mills Breast Cancer Institute. Carle Foundation Hospital sought state approval to expand the third-floor research area, which will allow for enhanced technology and improved translational research capabilities. The research floor will be increased in size by 10,000 square feet to 27,777 square feet.

"This additional build-out of the research floor will allow us to lead breast cancer research efforts on a national level and address the needs of patients battling this often intractable disease," said Stephen Boppart, M.D., Ph.D., a noted University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researcher and associate professor, who was named director of the Mills Breast Cancer Institute in January 2007. "It will allow us to bring together academic researchers, clinicians and entrepreneurs to share new ideas and develop partnerships addressing new breast cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment strategies."

With the third floor build-out, the Mills Breast Cancer Institute will become a model facility which incorporates the latest trends for increasing interdisciplinary interactions between researchers and physicians conducting translational research. The Mills Breast Cancer Institute research floor will allow for:

  • State-of-the-art biological and technological research labs.
  • Clinical procedural work, tissue sampling and processing within the same facility.
  • Reconfigurable and modular lab spaces.
  • A microscopy lab, computer lab and library.

Carle Foundation Hospital has been building the infrastructure for its translational research program with the initial emphasis on breast cancer. There are now five, Hospital-funded translational breast cancer research studies underway. Examples include:

  • Real-time optical coherence tomography on human tissue.
  • The effects of dietary photo-estrogens on breast cancer tissue.
  • Gene expression profiling to improve the prediction of breast cancer response to endocrine therapy.

Members of the Mills family and officials from Carle Foundation Hospital, Carle Clinic and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign broke ground on the Mills Breast

Cancer Institute in April 2006. The facility was made possible by a $10 million donation from Linda and Doug Mills.

"This institute will not only serve local patients well, but will also serve as a new model for other centers to follow in approaching specific multi-specialty diseases," Dr. Boppart said. "A cornerstone of this approach is to translate world-class research into innovative strategies for the prevention, detection, diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer."

The Mills Breast Cancer Institute is a collaboration of Carle Foundation Hospital and Carle Clinic. Services are currently being offered through the Mills Breast Cancer Institute on the sixth floor of the North Clinic.